The Anderby Creek Cloud Bar is grandly described as the world's first "official cloudspotting area", and ranks as Lincolnshire's 167th most popular tourist attraction. This is not bad considering there are more than 1,000 contenders in this well endowed county's table. The "bar" consists of a viewing platform on top of a large sand dune in one of the remotest parts of the Lincolnshire coast. The Cloud Appreciation Society, with a worldwide membership of 28,417, has provided special seats for viewing clouds and parabolic mirrors for scanning the sky.

The society believes "clouds are unjustly maligned and that life would be immeasurably poorer without them" and it pledges to "fight blue sky thinking." On a visit a few days ago it was impossible to get a proper feel for the place since the fog was dense. A notice on the society's website notes that on the day the place was officially opened the weather was terrible: it was a peerless day without a cloud in the sky. Given normal conditions, however, the cloud bar is wonderfully placed. With the sea in one direction and the flat Lincolnshire fens on the other there is not a hill or tree to obscure the view of an enormous sky and any cloud that may appear. This facility replaced a derelict beach shelter and was largely paid for by the European Regional Fund. Should the weather turn too wet to look upwards, some seats have been thoughtfully provided underneath the construction.